Dan's Papers - March 28, 2008

Dear Dan,
Dear David,
I'm Sharon Gentile from Springs on Harbor Boulevard. My daughter Ginger Sladon Gentile tutored you or your brother in high school. She graduated from Columbia University and for the last five years has lived and worked making films in San Telmo, Argentina a section of Buenos Aires, the beef capital of South America. My other daughter, Joyce, went to Springs School in 1994, and 9th grade at East Hampton High School, then finished at Southampton High School, and graduated from Northeastern in Boston.
We have been vegan, vegetarians and flex-veggies who eat (Pacific cold water) and local fish, and for a current personal healing opportunity I eat raw live organic fresh vegan food 95% of the time. As a family we never ate chicken or eggs, to avoid salmonella and because we once had chicks as pets, and now I personally choose not to eat anything with a face or a mother.
You can purchase Coleman beef at Waldbaums in East Hampton and at King Kullen in Bridgehampton. This info is for transition: Tuesday night Nutrition for Wellness meets at the library of the East Hampton Middle School at 7 p.m. There are lots of books to purchase for $10. Like the China Study, they give great tips on how to insure getting all your nutrients by eating more nutrient dense foods, berries and fruit, green and the full rainbow of veggies, nuts, seeds, soy, almond and hemp milk etc. Using fresh foods you prepare quickly as smoothies and sorbets and sauces is preferable to processed foods. At my home, I personally have an extensive library of menus and choices for people who love their pets and would never think of eating them or drinking their milk, or eating their eggs.
When you are in Sag Harbor pick up the special 60th issue of April VEGNEWS or at a good magazine shop. It has great info. I'm happy you are thinking about these things! Best of luck, lots of laughs and loads of love.

Ignorance is bliss until you watch what they do to cows on a factory farm. Free range baby! - DLR

Dear Dan,
I love your publication but PLEASE PLEASE do a little research before you put your stories to print. Your "GRUMMAN'S REVENGE" article is so filled with errors it is embarrassing.
To start off, you have the wrong aircraft! The photo shows a Lockheed C-130 Herculeas transport. The whole blowup between Boeing and Northrup-Grumman is over the replacement of the Air Force's Boeing KC-135 aerial tanker. Wrong plane, wrong company! Then you get into history. You are correct when you state that the Japanese Zero was superior to the fighters that the Americans had when they attacked Pearl Harbor but again you've got the wrong plane. When the Japanese hit Pearl Harbor the main American fighters defending the base were Curtis P-40 Warhawks not Brewster Buffalos (you had the name reversed) and they were not biplanes. The Brewster Buffalo was clearly outclassed by the Zero and suffered high losses and was ultimately removed from front line service. The whole thing about Leroy Grumman designing the F-4F Wildcat fighter based on information gleaned from parts of crashed Zeros retrieved at Pearl Harbor is totally wrong. The Wildcat fighter was already in service with the Navy and Marines at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack and was the best aircraft the Americans had against the Zero until the F6F Hellcat came along. It was the Hellcat that profited from information the Americans got from a crashed but intact Zero fighter that was found near the Aleutian Islands in Alaska. Also, later on in your article you call Grumman's E2C Hawkeye a spy plane. It isn't.

Dear Dan,
Nice article about Leroy Grumman et al (Grumman's Revenge 3/7/08), but for the sake of historical accuracy: Not all the planes over Pearl Harbor were Zeros, which were fighter a/c. The Japanese attacking force included torpedo planes, dive-bombers and multi-engine level bombers operating from altitude.
While much of what you say about the superior qualities of the Zero is true, the a/c had two glaring weaknesses - no armor around the cockpit to protect the pilot and a lack of self-sealing gas tanks, leaving them very vulnerable to devastating fires when hit. The leader of the AVG (Flying Tigers) in China, General Claire Chennault, countered the Zero advantages with a basic and successful tactic for the American AVG P-40s in battle. As the P-40 was heavier that the Zero, his pilots would gain altitude when an attack was eminent and dove through the enemy formations to shoot them down. The lighter Zero could not stay with a P-40 in a dive.
The Brewster Buffalo (F2A-3) had a single wing. It was not a bi-plane. The a/c was obsolete when the war started and its last use in battle was in defense of Midway Island in June 1942, when the last 20 of them took on the attacking Japanese. They were decimated and only a few battered a/c returned, the rest being shot down.
The F4F Wildcat was in production at Grumman and in the fleet before the US entered the war. The newest version (folding wings for more carrier storage) was flown in combat by the Navy at Midway. They too were at a disadvantage against the Zero, but a Navy commander named Thach devised a defensive maneuver (named the Thach Weave), which countered the Zero advantages and offered mutual defense for Wildcats operating in pairs.
The best carrier-based US a/c in WWII was the Hellcat and the Corsair.